A question: do your numbers assume a 100% opposition kill rate? (in other words, no opponents missed) Also, do they take into account ExP earned from wandering monsters? (sometimes, these can add up to as much as the module's pre-gen's)
My data is a listing/calculation of every set/numbered encounter in the adventure. I do not include wandering monsters (too variable).
Again, the xp/level data is not going to be a perfect representation of the exact way each and every party will level in the adventure.
The party may run through the adventure, avoiding most of the encounters, kill the BBEG, and move on with half the xp and treasure in the adventure.
The party may run in and run out, numerous times, allowing guards and such to be “restocked” between raids. They may encounter many wandering monsters. When a monster carries 2-12 gp, the DM may roll 12 (in this data collection, I assumed an average roll for all random treasure values). So this party may end up with double the xp and treasure in the adventure.
The party may hire a small army to march into the dungeon with them and have to split xp and treasure with 20 characters.
The party may number only 3 PCs (of very experienced and competent Players) and still raze the whole dungeon.
Or the party may have the average number of characters, go through and encounter each area once, get the average treasure rolls, and get the exact xp and treasure amounts I’ve listed.
I decided to go with what is listed in the adventure, straight, as is. Some people may consider these numbers the maximum potential; some may consider it the minimum expectation. I believe it is the average probability.
Considering this average probability, the only way the AD&D1 party would come out lower level than what I’ve calculated is if the game used the training rules – but polls here, and conversations I’ve had in other places (Web and Real World) shows that the majority of games did not use the training rules.
And even if you do use the training rules in the level calculations shown so far, it only reduces the AD&D1 party one level on average.
Olgar Shiverstone said:
Also, as I was raised on B/ED&D before moving to AD&D, I used the B/ED&D XP system -- stop 1 XP short of the next level, and no training time or gold requirements (something I was happy to see dropped in 3E). I did give magic item XP per the DMG tables, but didn't give XP for sold items. And I didn't ever adjust XP for encounter difficulty -- one of a number of things I'm not surprised I missed in the 1E DMG, as every time I pick that book up I find something new.
This describes my experience, as well. Although I would have given xp for sold magic items, no one ever sold a magic item in my campaigns. I generally marked out a lot of treasure (money and magic) from published adventures, and I simply didn’t put in nearly as much treasure in my homemade adventures. So the PCs didn’t usually have a surplus of either in my campaigns – by my intentional design.
[But I saw characters from other games with notebook pages full of magic items gathered from published and homemade adventures.]
Quasqueton